Biggest is Not Always Best in Change Management Programmes (Part 2)

Change the only constant

It’s important to recognise that at the heart of successful change management is risk management. That means managing risk at every level throughout the programme – i.e. from the bottom (such as the risk of key milestones being missed), right up to shareholder value at risk at any time during the course of the programme. This is crucial data which should be shared between the Project Sponsor and the CEO and ensures that the top people in the organisation are actively and fully engaged in the programme.

Furthermore many large corporates are by necessity in a constant state of change. They face pressures of regulation or governance changes, new technology that impacts on their market, changes forced on them from competitors, and many others. For this reason, change becomes a permanent characteristic of their business, which means that shareholder value is constantly at risk. And monitoring of this risk becomes essential.

Project risk management demands a toolset that can guarantee accuracy of data, openness, transparency and visibility at every level. It is therefore important that risks can be evaluated and escalated up the management tiers within a major change programme. Some risks can stay at a low level in a project as they will have limited impact if they ever do turn into issues. Conversely, some risks need to be elevated to more senior levels because if these risksbecome issues then they can have a major impact on the wider programme or even the organisation itself.

Big toolsets are not good at identifying and monitoring these risks. What is needed is a more nimble project management system that enables you to see the wood from the trees, allowing different risks to be assessed and reviewed by different people.

Shareholder value risks should be reviewed by the Board and the CEO, whereas risks that are limited to the project should be dealt with by the project team and the sponsor. To be able to do this you need to have quick and easy access to a programme’s risk map at each and every level. In this iPad-dominated world, pages of printed risk tables simply do not cut it.

Big, traditional project management systems cannot be deployed in this way because they do not provide practical tools. And risk management – these days – is now the name of the game in project management.

A practical alternative

PM3 from Bestoutcome is a toolset that has been developed by practitioners who have years of big change experience. It is infused with the very latest thinking and is an extremely powerful project risk management system delivering dashboard-style risk data in a form that works just as well on a desktop as it does on a tablet. It is an elegant, user-focused toolset that is sophisticated but easy to learn and easy to use. In many ways, PM3 is the contemporary antithesis of old big system project management technology.